The Rise of the G.I. Army, 1940-1941. Paul Dickson

issued a press release endorsed by the president saying that black troops would be used in combat roles, but the status quo would be maintained, and black and white enlistees would serve apart from each other in their own units. Early promised that African American units would be created in virtually every branch, including aviation, and endorsed a long-standing policy “not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations.” As if he had not been understood he added that “no experiments should be tried . . . at this critical time.”

      Unfortunately, the wording of the press release gave the firm impression that the policy of continued segregation had been endorsed by White and the other black leaders who immediately demanded that the president retract the “damaging impression” that they had endorsed Jim Crow policies. Press Secretary Early then issued a formal retraction, but the damage had been done.⁶⁵

      The impact of the press release, with an endorsement from the president in the form of the initials “OK, FDR” effectively turned it into a statement of racial policy that would remain in effect for years to come. Morris J. MacGregor, an official Army historian of racial integration of the military, observed that the press release was “immediately elevated in importance by War Department spokesmen, who made constant reference to it as a presidential directive” and that it was actually cited by “some Army officials as a presidential sanction for introducing segregation in new situations, as, for example, in the pilot training of black officers in the Army Air Corps.”⁶⁶

      The reaction from the black press was loud and clear. As Time magazine framed the story in its October 28 issue: “From Memphis’ Beale Street to Harlem’s Lenox Avenue, the U.S. Negro press last week suddenly took fire. It blazed up over the Army’s No. 1 social problem: what to do with Negro officers and Negro enlisted men.” Time then noted: “Even Harlem’s pro-Roosevelt Amsterdam News joined in the outraged hubbub. JIM CROW ARMY HIT, ran its page one banner over a story denouncing the Army’s policy.”⁶⁷

      The outraged black press immediately began a crusade to integrate the Armed Forces, which would continue throughout the war and beyond. Individual black Americans also took note. Leon Hardwick’s impassioned letter, published in the Washington Post, argued that the segregation of the Armed Forces worked against “ironclad national unity” and as such was “a threat to the security of the nation.”⁶⁸

      Such criticism came at a particularly awkward time for Roosevelt, whose opponent in the upcoming election was a vocal advocate of civil rights and was becoming more and more popular among black voters. Willkie had a citizens’ committee composed of a group of prominent black leaders, including the head of the Associated Negro Press, who backed him because they believed he offered the promise of “better conditions for the Negro people.”⁶⁹

      In the weeks prior to the election, Roosevelt tried to offset the negative effect of the Army’s announcement and appeal to black voters by promoting Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Sr. to the rank of brigadier general, making him the first person of color to hold that rank in the Regular Army. He also appointed Colonel Campbell C. Johnson, the commander of Reserve officers’ training at Howard University, as a special aide to the director of the Selective Service System. Finally, he appointed Judge William H. Hastie, dean of the Howard University Law School, as a civilian aide to the secretary of war.⁷⁰

      In and of themselves, these appointments were welcomed, but they dodged the problem and were also seen as a clumsy attempt to appease the demands of those demanding full racial equality. As Walter White later wrote of the appointments: “Had they been twenty men each, the problem faced could be ameliorated only to a slight degree as long as the basic evil of segregation was not ended.”⁷¹

* The full text of Gorin’s book is online at: https://archive.org/details/patriotismprepai031233mbp.

* The books mentioned by name were John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero, Andreas Latzko’s Men in War, and Walter Millis’s Road to War, which was published in 1935 and by 1940 was being called the isolationists’ bible.

* An essential line in the bill: “Congress declares that in a free society the obligation and privilege of military service should be shared generally in accordance with the fair and just system of compulsory military training and service.”

* Fish himself had been compromised: he and a handful of fellow members of Congress had used their franking privileges to distribute tens of thousands of pro-Nazi documents from fraudulent front groups postage-free. This was not known at the time but would become known before the war was over. Fish claimed to be unaware of the Nazi tie to these groups. Other members of Congress who knowingly or unknowingly lent their franks to the Nazis were Clare E. Hoffman, Henry C. Dworshak, Bartel J. Jonkman, Harold Knutson, John G. Alexander, James C. Oliver, Gerald P. Nye, and D. Worth Clark.

* One of the most famous members of the organization was African American writer Richard Wright, who made his views clear in “Not My People’s War,” published in the June 1940 issue of the New Masses. He argued that black Americans should not support the war effort and should work hard to keep the United States neutral. Jerry W. Ward and Robert J. Butler, The Richard Wright Encyclopedia (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2008), 418.

CHAPTER 5

       “YOUR NUMBER CAME UP”: THE 1940 PEACETIME DRAFT